5 Unexpected Gender Differences in Children’s Clothing

Everyone knows that there are glaring differences between girls’ clothes and boys’ clothes. It’s no secret. Stores keep them in different sections, after all! As a feminist and a queer person, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about gender inequalities for both adults and children.

When I finally became a parent myself, I was determined to give my own child more freedom and more options. I would not dictate what he was “allowed” to wear based on what was between his legs. I prepared myself to offer him boy clothing, girl clothing, as well as more neutral clothing, and let him decide what was best for him over time.

I also prepared myself to deal with the inevitable push-back my family would receive in our gender stratified society.

Yet, just like with basically everything else about parenting, thinking about it beforehand couldn’t possibly prepare me for some of this stuff. As my son and I have entered the world of kid clothes together, I’m continually surprised by how heavily gendered it all is, and the weird ways that manifests.

The clothes fit differently, even in the same size

This was the first thing I noticed that really threw me for a loop. When my kid was a newborn wearing hand-me-downs from a variety of friends and family members, the clothing was heavily gendered, but it was the same stuff underneath. In other words, while each brand offered the usual pinks and blues, a six-month onesie was a six-month onesie.

Sure, one had an airplane on it and the other had a kitten wearing a leopard print dress (who comes up with this stuff?), and the girls’ option might also feature weird ruffles around the sleeves, but that was it. I could say “my kid is wearing twelve-month clothes right now,” and that would remain true, whether we were talking about girls’ clothes or boys’ clothes.

But at some point, that stopped being the case. Once you reach a certain size in many brands (I’ve noticed this particularly with Carter’s and Old Navy, but there are others), clothing intended for boys and the same clothing intended for girls are wildly different sizes.

These days, my child wears a 2T in Old Navy boys’, but if you want to get anything from the girls’ section (he loves sparkles, so sometimes we do), you’re better off choosing a 3T.

Now I know what you’re about to say: little boys are often a bit bigger than little girls. That would make total sense to me, if it weren’t for the fact that the size charts don’t reflect it. I’ve checked them. According the data feeding U.S. size charts, 2T should mean the same thing regardless of which gender we’re talking about, both in pounds and height. The clothing companies disagree.

This means, of course, that if you’re buying clothes according to the chart and according to your child’s gender, your little girls will constantly be in clothing that’s just a little bit too snug.

The garments are often cut differently

In addition to these sizing issues, the shape of clothing for male and female toddlers are completely different even though, at this age, boys and girls are shaped more or less the same. This one has an easy explanation: They’re cut that way to mimic the clothing of male and female adults.

For me, that doesn’t make it any less troubling. Men and women are independent individuals, they have the ability to search for the clothing they want, and their clothing options are at least to some degree based on sexual expectations. A four-year-old doesn’t need to be dressed in what society views as sexy for a 22-year-old.

Why is it that a long sleeve t-shirt from the boys’ section is square and boxy with loose sleeves that allow for plenty of movement, and the same item from the girls’ section has tight sleeves, a plunging neckline, and might even be cinched at the waist?

The necklines in and of themselves pose a huge problem, especially in the wintertime. No toddler needs a shirt cut so low that you can nearly see their nipples, and all that exposed skin gets cold.

The unexpected symbolism of gendered clothing

Princesses are for girls and superheroes are for boys. You knew that already, and if you’re a progressive parent, you’ve probably thought about how ridiculous it is more than once. But the reality is that those big, glaring, differences are just the tip of the iceberg.

Pink and blue might be the easiest things to rail against, but they’re far from the only things that serve as gender markers for our children. Smaller, more insidious, differences are everywhere. And I wonder if some of them might be, well, worse.

A few months back, we received a bunch of handed down clothing all at the same time. Most of it was from boys, so there was a lot of gray and dark blue, but there was also one box of cast offs from a three-year-old girl. One afternoon, while my wife was at work, the kid and I put all the new/old clothes in a heap and sorted through them. He reached into the giant pile of fabric and pulled out a pair of gray tights covered in multi-color hearts. He was instantly in love with them. In fact, he wanted to wear them every day.

This got me thinking about symbolism and gender in a brand new way. We know that our culture expects women and femmes to do the vast majority of emotional labor. What I realized on that day is that clothing intended for little girls is often covered with symbolism promoting that very labor.

Clothing for little boys? Not so much. A heart is an organ we all have, and all children have emotions and need to learn to deal with them. Yet, a heart is a gendered symbol. Little boys get trucks and superheroes and trains and dinosaurs, and all sorts of fun stuff on their clothes…but you’ll be hard pressed to find a boy’s shirt with a heart on it.

Little boys are being told, from a very young age, that feelings don’t matter, or at least shouldn’t matter to them. They’re learning that feelings are for girls alone.

Even the edging on garments are heavily gender coded

Remember earlier when we were talking about onesies? I said the boys’ onesies and girls’ onesies were the same, right? Well, that’s only partly right. I had expected to see onesies for girls with kittens and pink flowers, and onesies for boys with frogs riding motorcycles. I was more or less ready for that, but I wasn’t ready for decorative edges.

The edging for a piece of clothing intended for a boy was plain, but for a girl, it never ever was. Starting in newborn sizes, a multi pack of onesies labeled “girl” featured teeny-tiny bows made of teeny-tiny ribbons with scalloped edging around the neck and sleeves. Baby pants for boys were simple and utilitarian. Girls’ pants featured ruffles or lace around the ankles.

In larger sizes, the trend continues. Girls get ruffles and lace, tiny decorative details constantly differentiating them from their male peers. And while I have nothing against a cute pair of jeans with lacy trim (I’d wear it!), I do wonder about the prevalence of such details. To have nearly all of your clothing – or absolutely none of it – adorned with decorative edging for as long as you can remember is a very particular experience.

The quality of the fabric often differs

I’m going to be honest. Other parents warned me about this one, and I just did not believe them. I’ll repeat, friends of mine who were already parents told me about a marked quality difference between girls’ clothes and boys’ clothes. I thought they were full of crap.

Why? They were mostly the parents of male children, male children who loved “girly” things, and yet they kept putting those children in masculine attire. The pressure to force children to gender conform is enormous, and so when I heard “the boys’ stuff is just higher quality,” I unfairly assumed that some of those parents were grasping at straws.

But let me tell you something. The boys’ stuff is higher quality. The fabrics are thicker, sturdier, and longer wearing. The clothing is less flimsy. It’s also just plain warmer. Shopping for my son on the cusp of winter last year inspired my mother-in-law to say “don’t little girls get cold?”

I’m sure they must! And when they do, their parents have the option of handing them a thin, useless cardigan, or braving the boys’ section for an actual sweater.

Treating children in markedly different ways according to gender lines definitely affects them later down the line. The question is how much, and in which ways. What does it mean for our children if the clothes we put on their bodies – long before they’re able to articulate their own wishes in that department – are so drastically and utterly gendered?

I don’t have all the answers, but the questions continue to unsettle me.

The quality issue is the most annoying – in the UK you see it a lot with school shoes – shoes for boys are made for outdoor life – girls shoes often are less grippy, and really irritatingly not designed to keep their feet dry in wet weather.

Diya Balloo

This is really true! When I was in primary school, used to buy shoes made for boys, because I could not put up with the girl shoes. I’m 13 now, and I still find it really hard to find a good pair of school shoes.

Diya Balloo

This article basically sums up everything that I think about as soon as I walk into a shop.

Eleanor Carlisle

I totally agree. Shoes are a huge bug bear. Also trousers, my son has great lined trousers, almost impossible to buy in girls wear – she mostly wears boys stuff as I can’t bear to watch her freeze for fashion!

April Peacock

For shoes, I use Plae shoes. I complained that they were splitting their colors and styles by gender and they combined them all into one section. It’s so much easier to choose a shoe now and see all the colors available rather than having to go back and forth between sections.

Valerie

This is why my 2 year old daughter’s winter clothes are mostly from the boy’s section

Kate de Jude

It just conditions them for later life. Men’s clothing is usually natural fibres and sturdy whereas women contend with flimsy synthetics. I often choose male singlets. When a man buys a suit and needs it adjusted usually a free service whereas if a woman buys an elegant frock and need the thin straps in the shoulder adjusted there is a hefty price attached.

Carole C

I had 2 kids while living in the US and found a lot of what the author says is true. Clothes and toys were very gendered…. even bikes. We could not find a non gendered bike which was most annoying as my kids were 4 years apart and I wanted to pass it down from my daughter to my son. Things may have changed in the intervening 20 years but it doesn’t sound like it. One oasis of sanity back then was an online company called Hanna Andersson. They are still going and their kids clothes are practical, mostly cotton, really hardwearing and comfy….. with no difference in the quality of both boys and girls…. and a lot of them gender neutral.

Jen Good

I like Hanna Andersson, but they do gendered sizing. I’ve ordered the same sizes in boy and girl (My son loves rainbows!) and had the girl one be noticeably narrower.

Carole C

I did check them out recently and they do seem to have buckled a bit to the US way of doing things. A few more frills for girls and a few less unisex outfits it seems to me…. which is a bit sad.

“It’s also just plain warmer. Shopping for my son on the cusp of winter last year inspired my mother-in-law to say “don’t little girls get cold?”” — Seriously! I couldn’t find thermals in the ‘girls’ (baby/toddler) section at Target, couldn’t find anything even remotely similar to thermals, had to look in the ‘boys’ section to find anything, and the boys thermals (in the same size and brand of clothing that my daughter usually wears) are huge on my daughter! If I’d known before buying, I would have bought a size smaller, but I guess this way she can probably still wear them next year.

Andrea Withers

Fun fact, the girls clothes will always be thinner, flimsier, and less warm. This coming from a teenager who buys most of her own clothes and wears about 1/4 boys and 3/4 girls. Even in jackets. I have two jackets in the same ‘army’ style from the same store bought during the same season, the men’s is way, way warmer and also more practical than the women’s. I have a friend who has jeans in both the “mens” and “womens” fabric, they swear the mens are warmer and the wind doesn’t go through them.

April Peacock

I use leggings from the girls section for my son as thermals. He has regular ones and flannel lined ones and then we put the roomier cut “boys” pants over them. When it’s not as cold, he prefers to just wear leggings as pants. He’s 6.

Kristy Hughes

I noticed the size and thickness difference but also a big upset for my daughter is that her pants always have fake pockets on them rather than actual functioning pockets, like girls don’t have anything to put in a pocket, right!

gafromca

And when girls’ pants have pockets they are not as large and deep as boys’. My daughter lived in boys’ cargo shorts boys’ PJ bottoms because they have good pockets, among other reasons. Its not that girls don’t have anything to put in the pockets, its that girls “always” carry a purse.

Erin Sewell

This is still an issue with my clothing. I’ve taken to writing emails to companies whose pants don’t have real pockets, telling them that I loved the fit and look of their clothing but I had a policy of never giving my money to companies that didn’t understand a woman’s need for pockets. I invited them to email me when their lines started including good-sized pockets in all their pants and dresses.

Adi Ziv

Hi Katherine,
Oh my how right you are. And don’t think it’s only in the US. I am an Israeli blogger for children’s clothing, fashion etc, and a mother of a 14 month old boy, Eitan. I was always a feminist but I didn’t know this would irritate me so much! The problem is that the general public eats this up – girls should where pinks and boys blues etc.. I had a lot of hand-me-down from my sisters baby girl, and even some of my relatives thought it was strange that a baby boy had pink / purple / things with dots clothing. For me babies are basically gender Neutral. The thing is that I believe this has an affect on how these babies understand the world and learn to be children. They learn that because of their gender they are “suppose” to like things – and that’s just wrong! So in short – loved this article of yours 🙂

How about the tank tops? Girls always have thin spaghetti straps, even though such is not allowed in the schools, nor even in most work locations. Boys have decently thick shoulder straps. Girls are already being conditioned to fight for their only clothing options.

Nancy Schimmel

I don’t have kids, but all my life I’ve known that boys’ and men’s clothes are sturdier than girls’ and women’s. And I buy men’s work pants for the pockets.

jennjeff96

i try that but seems to me that they don’t seem to fir correctly, especially in the rear…ugh

Imelda Evans

It’s completely insane and has been this way since my nearly-adult daughter
was little. Neither of us can ever forget the time we went to buy her
jeans when she was about 8 years old. The girls jeans in what should
have been her size were so tight that
she couldn’t get her FOOT into them. Never mind the rest of her. And
she was a tiny slip of a thing at the time. The sort of kid who needed
elastic waisted pants because the others would fall down. Then we
walked literally around to the other side of the display rack and found a
perfect pair in her size, that were roomy and comfy and sturdy fabric
and thought (at first) that the others were an abberation – until we got
to the checkout and discovered that the second pair were boys jeans.
FOR AN 8 YEAR OLD. I was so angry.

Also, the point you make about the quality is also incredibly true. When
the same child was a young teen, we went looking for tracksuit pants to
take on camp. We were buying them to be comfy and warm for CAMP. The
girls’ ones were thin and flimsy and about as warm as a summer scarf. The boys’ ones were made of thick, tough fleece. Guess which ones we ended up buying? Even though, by
then, she had some shape, they were still an infinitely better choice in
every way. I think they were even a couple of dollars cheaper. The
message, that girls’ clothes are all about fashion, at the expense of
utility and sense, even in a garment that is supposed to be utilitarian,
is infuriating.

This was in Australia, btw.

Hakainokami

Girls clothes are longer and thinner and boys clothes are shorter and wider. So if your 5 y/o boy still has a 2t waist but 5-6 length legs.. The girls jeans are your friends if you don’t want a huge mass of cinched in jeans at the waist. I wish they had petite, reguar, and long sleve and leg lengths in kids instead of this weird gendered system.

D Mom

Is this really about clothes?

Jennifer Sheffield

Don’t understand your question. It’s underlyingly about sexism and how it pervades our society at every age and level, and that means it affects clothes and comfort at every age and level.

Is it about more than just clothes? Yes.

Are clothes are just an excuse to talk about something else? No. It really is about clothes.

jennjeff96

why is it that when looking for “work clothes” womens sections are all dress clothes or scrubs? i work in the construction inspection field and need real work clothes, cargos, durable jackets etc. ans they need to fit correctly. mens pants do not fit the way they need to.

Erin Sewell

My partner is a veterinarian, and she has the same problem. She buys in the men’s section but they don’t fit her hips right.

Katrina Zierer Wilkins

When I had children at home, I never had one problem finding clothing that boys were allowed to wear to school. Different story with girls clothing. Another pet peeve. Toddler shoes with heels. Why?

Juliet Richardson

Toddlers? ?

You’re behind. They are now offering heels for children MUCH younger.

Stupid stupid!

Giselle O’Connor

Land’s End, LL Bean, Costco & Target are where I shop for my kids clothes. I have 3 boys & a girl. Land’s End kids clothes are all the same quality, and are great for school clothes. LL Bean has fantastic outerwear (and a lifetime guarantee). Costco has things like thermals for boys & girls, and their little kids clothes are well priced (Carters). Target I find annoying when it comes to gendering kids clothes, but they have really upped their game with Cat & Jack. The girls leggings wear better (sturdier) and the t-shirts for boys & girls are the same quality although still cut differently. BTW, Target offers larger sizes on their website.

Erin Sewell

I’m an elementary school teacher. I look around the playground frequently, especially as seasons are changing, especially if the subject of dress codes has recently been raised.

I noticed that girls in summer were usually wearing skin-tight leggings with t-shirts that did not cover their hips, let alone their bums. Their t-shirts were several inches shorter in every direction – sleeves, necks, and hems. There didn’t seem to exist a neutral-toned pair of shorts in the wardrobe of any girl at my school. (It’s a big school, nearly a thousand kids, in a well-off suburb.)

One of the side effects of this is continual worry about dress code violations, especially among middle-school girls. Boys’ clothing was meant to protect and hide their bodies. Girls’ clothing was meant to display their bodies. Since a dress code can usually be summed up with the phrase, “Don’t show off your body,” this meant that boys were almost never cited for violations – and girls CONSTANTLY were.

I now have a standard message that I send to principals and/or teachers, every fall when I get a form making me “aware” of the school dress code. It says: “I am signing this form to indicate my awareness of the dress code but not my agreement with it. I will do my best to ensure that my daughters are compliant, but if there is a problem, it is my expectation that my daughter will not lose more than five minutes of class time to fixing it. The content of her brain is far more important to me than the clothes on her body, and therefore, her loss of class time to a dress code violation will result in a call to the superintendent.”

For some reason, nobody has ever called me about a dress code violation. 🙂

I think a lot of the issue is that most parents are mortally offended if someone is mistaken about the sex of their child, even a newborn, hence the market for masculine or feminine cuts for toddlers, and infants’ clothes with nasty scratchy itchy trim against the poor baby skin of infant girls. I’m a bit weird for remembering a *lot* from when I was 3 and even 2, and I can tell you that lacy edging and nylon clothes and hemispherical buttons were sources of unending misery (similarly, for that matter, chunky stiff denim on short skinny legs – the stuff doesn’t bend, and when you squat or kneel it cuts off the circulation behind your knees). I’m appalled at the vanity of putting scrunchy headbands or hairclips on infant girls – all that irritation against an exposed sensitive baby scalp. And, bigger picture, it’s deeply horrifying that even at age 2 or 3, girls are already having their mobility restricted by their attire.

Speaking of which, did they ever fix the petite sizing problem for girls’ clothes? I hated most pants as a child – and it was only in adulthood that I discovered that the rise was the problem, that pants could actually fit with the crotch in the right place. Short women are usually short girls first, but the idea that we need a different cut wasn’t around then.

Here’s another thing that’s odd. Girls can have horses running free on their clothing, but for boys, the horse always has to have a rider (a cowboy). What is the message there? It’s girly to love horses unless you want to be their master?

Virginia Turney

Cost also, less material for girls but they cost more.

Angela Stroud

Yes!! And can we talk about the tight, thin skinny leg pants for girls? You can see every contour of her diaper in them!! I feel like it’s over sexualizing my daughter at 3 months!!!

I find this post very useful and the insights that you have shared are also important and noteworthy. Well, these days brands are pushing to gender neutral kids clothing and making all clothes equal for boys and girls.

Clothdragon

The trick about the thicknesses of clothing is that it subtly encourages girls to be indoor delicate creatures careful of their delicate clothes and boys to be outdoor busy and playful. It’s all part of the idea that boys are active and girls sedentary.

andrea

If you think the differencece in clothing is bad, just compare the difference in toddler underwear. Little girls 2t underwear are so thin and small compared to boy’s in the same size. Its crazy.

Bethany M. Edwards📚

I cried in the children’s section of the military base Exchange store I was in while shopping for back to school clothes for my daughter. She recently moved up to a size 7/8 in girl’s clothes (6 years old going into 1st grade). Not only did every shirt say something about “pretty, cute, sexy”, but each shirt and dress came with a matching necklace, purse, or lip gloss. When my daughter asked me why she can’t get a skateboard with her shirt like they sell in the boys section, I lost it. Where are all the clothes for our strong, superhero loving girls?? Why does every shirt in the girls section fit snug and barely cover their torso?? Why are there no long basketball shorts sold in the girls section??? I am researching how to write a letter to the clothing supply company in the military store, and would appreciate any advice for maximum impact. I really appreciate this article and am writing my own article this week about the need for more diverse female superheroes in books which goes hand in hand with clothing. I am advocating for more gender equality one book and one school t-shirt at a time until we stop the rampant sexism that is so harmful to boys and girls starting with young children.